J Paul Johnson
Born in Flames is a film no one should miss, though too many have. An early-’80s salvo of guerrilla-style feminist filmmaking, it took its director Lizzie Borden (yes, she took her professional name from that Lizzie Borden) some five years of DIY work with a band of upstarts to complete, and then just barely earned a theatrical release. Remastered and re-released on Blu-ray in a special Criterion Collection edition more than four decades after its initial release, Born in Flames has lost none of its virtuous anger nor unapologetic truth-telling; rather, its message may be, with the United States today seemingly on the precipice of unresolvable conflict, more timely than ever.
Shot as a quasi-documentary, Born in Flames is comprised of faux broadcast news, pirate radio transmissions, talk-to- and talking-heads interviews, and verité-style fly-on-the-wall dialogue. The effect, though dated both by its early-’80s setting and super lo-fi effects, is surprisingly mesmerizing, the result being a wholly immersive plunge into a nation at war with itself. Born in Flames reads like a slightly-alternative scenario in which America’s civil war is cut primarily across gender lines, though the complexities of class and race feature nearly as importantly in Borden’s intersectional manifesto. In short, Borden’s is an astonishingly prescient depiction of the conflicts that can, and will, ensue when women’s basic needs are not met.
The narrative is set in New York City ten years after what had ostensibly been a peaceful socialist-democratic revolution as two separate feminist groups—each of them using pirate radio to communicate with the public and with each other—intersect. One is led by the fiery white lesbian, Isabel (Adele Bertei), who fronts a postpunk no-wave band and heads up Radio Ragazza. Phoenix Radio, meanwhile is headed by the comparatively soft-spoken but no less effective Honey (played by Honey) operates Phoenix Radio. Borden carefully constructs a world where women have won the war but keep losing battles: everyday life is a shitstew of mansplaining, catcalling, harassing, gaslighting, and worse. Pointedly, even the apparently-successful socialist revolution of Born in Flames‘ diegesis yields little for women’s rights.
Soon, a well-known activist, Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield) arrives in New York and is immediately arrested; when she dies, more than a little suspiciously, in police custody, both Isabel and Honey are pressed into action by a third group, an even-more radical Women’s Army, is covertly stockpiling weapons and planning an insurgence. All of the women and their followers are, in turn, being tracked by both the FBI and a group of editors working for a socialist newspaper (one of whom, incidentally, is played by a young Kathryn Bigelow in a rare appearance onscreen).
How daring is Born in Flames? Its dizzying conclusion, shot mostly without permissions, has the activists taking aim at the twin towers of the World Trade Center—just like al-Qaeda terrorists would about two decades following. Borden all along knew that a house divided against itself could not stand, and the real threats to America’s survival were not external but internal. Its was a center that could not hold.
Born in Flames does not get the 4K disc treatment that some other new releases do, but given its lo-fi cinematography and faux-documentary styling, 2K does the job just fine. This restoration, conducted in 2016, is preserved by Anthology Film Archives and funded by the Golden Globe Foundation and The Film Foundation, with Borden herself having supervised and approved the process and product. Its quality is more than sufficient, but more important is its mere existence here on Blu-ray.
Special Features
- Audio commentary. Criterion has gone the extra mile here in assembling a marvelous commentary track featuring not only writer-director Borden, speaking to the complexities of navigating a largely Black and queer narrative from her position of relative privilege as a middle-class white woman, but also cast members Adele Bertei, Hillary Hurst, Sheila McLaughlin, Pat Murphy, Marty Pottenger, and Jeanne Satterfield, as well as crew members DeeDee Halleck and Chris Hegedus, all of whom share anecdotes and reminiscences from the production.
- Lizzie Borden. In 14-minute interview conducted in 2020, Borden discusses the process of writing, casting, and directing Born in Flames. Her determination to do so in spite of innumerable obstacles is inspirational and informative. Subtitles for the Deaf and hard of hearing are included, which in and of itself would not be notable except for the fact that Criterion has long neglected providing them for its English-language featurettes. If this indicates a policy change towards a more inclusive presentation, credit to Criterion for—finally—making it happen.
- Regrouping. This restored version of Borden’s 1976 75-minute directorial debut is, like Born in Flames, one that blurs the lines between fact and fiction, cast and director, documentary and the avant-garde. Unlike Born in Flames, Regrouping has little overt narrative structure, instead presenting what feels at first like a straightforward verité-style documentary about a 1970s New York City consciousness-raising feminist collective, something that looks and feels like the Maylses’ Salesman or Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies. That is, until both the group and the form Borden has taken begin to break down in a radical rupturing of sound and image. Only now, nearly 50 years after its making, has the long-shelved film been given the permission to exhibit and distribute by its participants, making its inclusion here a real find. SDH are included—and for this title, absolutely necessary.
- Enclosed in a single-disc clear jewel case is the film’s 16page color booklet featuring production and restoration information as well as essays by film scholar Yasmina Price and author So Mayer, with a new cover and illustrations by Jillian Adel.
Criterion’s presentation of Born in Flames does its subject justice. It may be long in coming, but Borden’s incendiary, groundbreaking feminist manifesto gets its due with a quality restoration and several informative featurettes. Let’s hope its wider availability on physical media gives this too-little-seen gem of DIY guerilla filmmaking a wider audience than ever before.
